


juliet, the dice was loaded from the start.

by diaghileafs



Category: Full House (US)
Genre: During Canon, Falling In Love, Grief/Mourning, Happy Ending, M/M, Season/Series 01, Warm and Fuzzy Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-07
Updated: 2016-12-07
Packaged: 2018-09-06 21:30:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8770048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/diaghileafs/pseuds/diaghileafs
Summary: 'Jesse always thought that a palpable slowing down of time was just another cinematic device, movie cliché. Not something that actually happens in real life. Definitely not something that happens when he’s looking at Joey.'





	

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [After All of These Years, He Really Should Have Known](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7559074) by [Calacious](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Calacious/pseuds/Calacious). 



> Written as a warmup and to get back into the swing of things. Calacious' amazing fic was never far from my mind - this doesn't hold a candle to it. Honestly.
> 
> Title taken from Romeo and Juliet by Dire Straits.

It starts with the refrigerator light on his face at midnight.

They eat a takeout dinner, the second night, and everyone goes to bed on time.

Only Jesse stays up late, does the laundry because he’s not sleeping much these days anyway. His sister likes to visit him while he imagines her stretched out – blue _Nissan_ , smashed window screen – blonde hair cradling her face like a halo so he can’t see the blood. It’s manageable, people say the guilt goes away, but he finds her scrunchie at the back of a drawer and that’s just too much to bear.

Now she’s dead, Pam belongs to their mom, Danny and the girls; he’s just the kid brother who never showed up, never cared enough – he’s not supposed to grieve.

Joey slips in in his Bullwinkle pyjamas, stubble on his chin. He tacks Stephanie’s latest masterpiece onto the cupboard (the first one not to include angels and headstones) getting out the cookie jar, drops a _Hostess CupCake_ into each of the neatly aligned lunchboxes on the countertop.

Jesse doesn’t say anything; there’s something comforting about Joey’s presence and calm way he makes his way into the adjoining room, folding the rest of the clothes by the oranges checkers of light through the door before he draws the blinds, sets the burglar alarm.

He doesn’t even think Joey’s noticed him until he reaches out.

Joey doesn’t reach out and touch him – there’s a small space for Jesse to say he’s fine, emit some lie and go upstairs without feeling embarrassed. Danny pushes the hugging policy, DJ asks incessantly about her mother, but Joey understands. Somehow over a handful of birthday parties and chance meetings in the shadow of the Katsopolis’ doorway, Joey just knows.

He puts his hands on the back of Jesse’s chair and sighs.

“Jess, buddy, you’re eating cream out of a pie dish with no pie.”

Jesse leans back against his knuckles and it takes them both by surprise. It’s a choice, Joey’s giving him, the macho act can be there or not – Joey doesn’t mind which he chooses.

He says nothing when Jesse balls up his cartoon button-up in his fists and cries.

 

* * *

 

They start laughing more, talking less about the dead. Danny lets them move ornaments and put a different comforter on his bed – tiny little things, details that shouldn’t mean everything but do – Stephanie starts kindergarten, DJ loses her last milk tooth. In between bathing the baby and making meatloaf, something shifts.

It isn’t not there one day and then just is. They’re not in a movie; there are no lightening bolts or violin music. It happens so slowly, Jesse doesn’t even notice. Doesn’t register the difference because he’s too busy sitting on the passenger side of Joey’s car, fiddling with the radio dial, or passing him the potatoes over weekday meals and Sunday lunches.

Jesse used to leave work early to cruise down the long roads, in and out of traffic, but now he tells his dad a kid has a thing so he can beat the school bus home – enjoy that small slice of time where Michelle takes her nap and cable plays reruns of _Happy Days_.

Angry drivers don’t make his heart pound in his chest anymore but Joey’s smile does.

There’s a pang of pain when Joey says, “hey, roomie,” over the kitchen sink.

Quick, sharp.

The weight of the door slamming behind him, knowing that Joey wasn’t thinking about him all day; hearing his name in the backing track of every song until he had to turn the radio off, wondering how his day was and what he had for lunch. Not disappointment exactly because Jesse isn’t expecting anything.

“Yo, Joe, what’s kicking?”

Gone in a second.

 

* * *

 

“DJ was making googly eyes at Kevin Johnson on the way home from school yesterday.”

“I was not!”

“Were too!”

The girls are sandwiched between their dad. Jesse – dateless for the first time on a Saturday night since the ninth grade – is perched on the arm of Joey’s chair.

He doesn’t know why this is, it’s not as if he’s run out of chicks to wine, dine and sixty-nine. Why he’d rather watch Joey’s blonde hair come alight in the Technicolor glare as he reaches forward to grab another handful of potato chips.

“ _Googly_ eyes?” Danny throws the word around his mouth, amused.

Joey crushes crinkle cut carbs with his jaw, full attention on a toothpaste commercial.

Jesse always thought that a palpable slowing down of time was just another cinematic device, movie cliché. Not something that actually happens in real life. Definitely not something that happens when he’s looking at Joey. The vein in his neck throbs with the sudden rush of salt, Jesse has to bite back the urge to press his thumb to it, feel Joey’s pulse and whether it would quicken if he did. He stares at the wick of his ear instead.

“Yeah,” Stephanie wiggles onto her daddy’s lap, excitedly, pointing – “like how Uncle Jesse’s looking at Joey.”

It’s Danny who reacts first, who makes a low sound of disapproval or something else before DJ bursts out laughing.

Jesse feels his cheeks burn, snatches the remote, “am not,” asks if anyone wants to find anything good on pay-per-view.

His roommate beside him doesn’t move. But as Jesse puts down the remote, he’s almost sure Joey’s fingers touch his thigh. 

 

* * *

 

If Jesse wakes at 3am with the milkman or the garbage truck, the only way he can go back to sleep is to tell himself it’s a simple case of misdirection.

Pam is dead. There’s a gaping sister shaped hole in his heart, a black abyss; anything once there cannot be returned. Gravestones bring little comfort, and her sweaters are starting to lose their smell.

The love – no, _affection_ (be careful) – has to go somewhere.

Could have been anyone; Wendy if she’d been the one to move in, her pet chimpanzee.

It just _happened_ to be Joey, Danny’s goofball best friend. The guy he spent the majority of his teenage years up in his room avoiding whenever Pamela had a house party. If they bumped into each other –on the landing, outside the bathroom while a couple made out inside – Joey would make a point of talking to him, still has that really _irritating_ habit of feeling the need to fill awkward silences. He used to try out new material him but Jesse would never laugh, even if they were decent, out of principle.

He feels bad now, whenever he lies awake like this, listening out for the paperboy, that he never laughed.

It was the principle.

It could have been anyone.

Only it’s not, his sister’s voice rings in his ears, it’s _Joey._ And that’s the thing.

 

* * *

 

Jesse’s always been a little bit bisexual.

He loves hair care products and musical theatre.

His obsession with the King even, at its roots, is anything but chaste. His sexual awakening in _The Las Vegas Hilton_ , age nine, was watching his idol and being crushed in the front row with sadness because he _knew_ he couldn’t coo over how Elvis’ hips came alive with his ma and sister on the ride home.

It’s not something he’s ever actively sought, affection from other men; never been clubs, dances, the bathhouses – San Francisco, the _scene_ doesn’t interest him. But lately Jesse finds himself taking detours down Castro, looking at the jocks and the clones, the preps and the leathers, and wonders – in a detached sort of way – if they could be lovers.

“My sweet little baby –”

It’s October. It’s Michelle’s fault really; they’ve been living together a month and Jesse’s on tender hooks 24/7 – no man can stay in that alcove forever, one day Joey’s going to pack his bags and leave. He’ll get fed up and want a proper bed (complains that his back hurts every morning and _that_ hurts Jesse); to relax, not have to sleep in the foetal position, fuck. He’s not going to get married and live in the attic.

Maybe it’s chicks – chicks and Joey that do it for him, and there’s only one Joey.

That makes it worse, so much worse, adds gravity, knowing that he has one chance and that taking it could ruin everything. Jesse would have to move out; out of Danny’s house, the neighbourhood, the city, the state. _Hell,_ he’ll go live with his relatives in Athens just so there’s an ocean between them.

Michelle’s deflected _dada_ marks the starts it all because he’s got the girls to think of. Stephanie was such a good sport about giving up her room; to go now would be ungrateful, _rude._ Might put her off men forever.

“My own flesh and blood thinks that you two are her father –”

Jesse is acutely aware that his couldn’t take his eyes off of his roommate in those leather pants as he practically _minced_ down the street, that he and Joey are wearing matching outfits, Double J. That the look on his brother-in-law’s face doesn’t twist as sympathetically in his gut as it should.

This is a bad situation, sure, in itself, and he feels bad for Danny – the biological dada, he really does – but Jesse wouldn’t be able to deny, if questioned in a court of law, the tilde wave it swept under his heart.

He couldn’t do it to the girls and so, as much as Jesse hates to admit it, he’s at a catch 22. Has to work out which would hurt more: confessing his feelings and running the risk of losing Joey or having to sit on them for the rest of his life, or until they fade, until one or both of them settles.

Pam would have to give it a name. A crush, infatuation – she’d have to put a label on his feelings, box them away, not everything is not black and white – _love._

“Oh my God.”

_This_ may not be permanent but Jesse, when Michelle gurgles those two syllables and he catches Joey’s eye (a graded sadness in them he wasn’t prepared to see), realises that his feelings are.

He would tell his niece years later, once she was older enough to understand and he had a double-barrelled surname: _and that was the moment I realised I was in love with your Uncle Joey._

 

* * *

 

Big Joe Stud only manages to last a little longer than DJ’s hamster, when they bought it home from the pet store and Stephanie showed it to the neighbour’s Rottweiler. Pam hadn’t even got the trunk open to take his cage out.

Fortunately for Joey, unlike Hammy, they don’t bury him in the backyard; Jesse’s clothes are put back in his wardrobe as soon as Joey gets out of his bubble bath.

Dinner is eaten, vegetables are argued over but Jesse feels Joey’s gaze on him as he hands him the salt, and he’s careful that their fingers don’t touch. They both volunteer to do the washing up because it’s daddy-daughter day and Danny wants to tuck his children in.

“You looked good in those leather pants.”

The words come out of Jesse’s mouth accidentally or on purpose (he can’t decide which). He turns on the faucet to drain the sink, hoping that will drown them out and Joey’s back is to him so he knows he can’t see how pink he goes.

A beat.

“Thanks,” Joey replies too casually. Then reaches over for the lasagne dish and suddenly he’s got his hips against Jesse’s – mouth brushing past his ear – whispers, “tight as hell though.”

His roommate tries desperately to cool himself down, to think about anything, anything at all that’s not Joey’s tomato breath on the back of neck, making all the microscopic hairs he doesn’t catch with the razor stand to attention. Goes weak at the knees, pales; every drop of blood going in one direction.

He keeps waiting for Joey to make a joke, ruffle his hair because he was just kidding so they can laugh, move off but he doesn’t. They don’t.

He turns. Joey’s arms are trapping him in, eyes all pupil. He anchors himself away ever so slightly; Jesse Katsopolis has fallen in love for the first time, and he’s fallen _hard_.

They stand like that, motionless until Danny’s feet clatter on the stairs, breathing heavily. Joey glances at Jesse’s lips for half a second, shakes his head before disappearing into the bathroom, leaving him clinging onto the countertop.

“God, _Jess_ , you look like you’re just about to pass out – shall I grab you a chair?”

Jesse would stab himself with the baby’s spoon if he hadn’t just cleaned it.

“No, I’m fine, Danny, really fine.”

 

* * *

 

When he was six or seven and being chased by bad dreams, it was his sister’s bed he crawled into. His dad believed in dealing out good old fashioned discipline with his belt or slipper, and his mom wore curlers that looked like a dinosaur’s spine on the shadows of his parents’ bedroom walls.

Pam would dig out her _Barbie_ nightlight, stroke his hair and tell him fairy stories. She would all be able to make it all the monsters go away.

Only now she’s not here and her little brother turns to Joey because he’s started having nightmares again.

Ones where he’s got no hair. Where he’s obese or in junior high again, and he’s geeky and his nose is growing so fast that he can’t put his glasses on. In the recurrent one, he’s about to tell Joey he loves him because he knows – how you just _know_ things in dreams – that he’s in love with him too. But every time he opens his mouth, teeth fall out and he’s bleeding and Joey tries to help and catch them but he’s _bleeding_ and he wants so badly to get the words out.

“Jess.”

He has his mouth locked around the last turkey leg, makes a grunt in response.

They may have hugged once or twice.

“I kinda feel like I should have gone on that gambling junket with my mom to Atlantic City.”

“They would’ve had their Miracle of Thanksgiving as soon as you hit the blackjack tables,” Jesse smirks “because, man, do you _suck_.”

It’s all completely innocent: making hot chocolate as quietly as they can, watching one of Stephanie’s VHS tapes with the volume turned down, murmuring about memories until Jesse falls asleep on the couch. But tonight, after all the stress and emotional toil of this dreaded holiday, something feels different.

Joey slumps back into the alcove, wringing his hands, “I’m serious, Jess, Thanksgiving is a time for family, and I –”

“What are you talking about, huh?” Jesse licks his lips, confused; dragging his mind back through the goddamn exhausting day, trying to pinpoint something anyone could have said or done to make Joey feel unwelcome. “It wouldn’t have been the same without you – Joseph, _you’re_ family.”

“You see me like a brother?”

The TV is shut off. Joey lies down on his cot, pulling the sheets all the way up to his chin. Jesse forgets about the leftovers and pads around the furniture to perch next to him.

For the first time since they moved in – two months exactly – the silence fills the thin gap between them. It’s only been two months.

That’s not long enough in real time, Jesse thinks, to fall in love with someone.

But then none of this is exactly everyday. Pamela’s was a freak accident on a back road (on a Tuesday afternoon, in the springtime). Moving into 1882 Girard St. was like skipping all the steps you’re supposed to take in your twenties; married, kids, supermarket trips. Three guys raising three girls, it’s sitcom stuff.

Except it’s not like that, not really, not to him, and that’s how Jesse knows deep down that he _does_ love Joey.

Because even though Donna Jo and Steph and Michelle aren’t actually his kids and Joey isn’t some poor girl he cajoled into matrimony, doing those things – the most mundane things by his side – feels _right._

When Jesse looks down, says no, Joey has his eyes closed but Jesse can tell he’s not asleep because of the low sigh that catches in the back of his throat at Jesse pressing his cranberry lips to his. He doesn’t even blink as the younger man pulls away, just an inch, and Joey curls his fingers around his collar.

Jesse’s legs slide into Joey’s lap, either side of his hips, hands everywhere (hair, shoulders, pyjama shirts) because they _physically_ can’t not touch each other. He’s never had a kiss like this before, that’s made him feel as though he’s floating in a black void and Joey’s sharp little breaths, the chocolate on the underside of his tongue, the sensation of their body’s pressed together, explode into colours against the insides of his eyelids.

This is better than any movie, even the ones you can get in the R-Rated section of the video store.

“What took you so long?”

But, God, the camp bed really _is_ uncomfortable.

“I don’t know, Joe.”

They go up to Jesse’s room and Joey never sleeps in the living room again.

**Author's Note:**

> The last two chapters of my main fic *fingers crossed* will be up by the end of the year. Just gotta get watching the new season of _Fuller House_ out of the way first! :)


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